Welcome to The Daily Constitutional London Library – my London reading recommendations for these days of self-isolation and social distancing.
If you are unable to come & visit us in London for the next little while, or if you're stuck at home, I'm providing a few suggestions for great London-themed & London-based books
In the series I'll be drawing in literary fiction, popular fiction, graphic novels and non-fiction to create a reading list as disparate and inspiring as London itself.
Each one features at least one London location – and I'll also share a map to some of the locations featured…
One For The Grown-Ups…The Savoy Cocktail Book
by Harry Craddock (1930)
Patriotic American Harry Craddock was driven from his homeland by a wicked and draconian law: Prohibition. As a bar tender, Harry was out of a job. Luckily for London he washed up on the bank of the Thames at the Savoy Hotel, where he popularised the Dry Martini in the capital and invented some 200 cocktails.
He also penned The Savoy Cocktail Book (1965 edition shown), not a day out of print since 1930. Even now, Harry’s book still has few rivals for clarity, variety and – best of all – simplicity.
An illustration of this simplicity can be found in his deliciously unfussy Egg Nog:
1 Egg
1 tablespoon sugar
2 oz. of any spirit desired
Fill glass with milk
Shake well and strain into long tumbler. Grate a little nutmeg on top.
Bish, bash and, indeed, bosh. A simple classic. The pages brim with golden rules and booze wisdom aplenty from the man who, legend has it, mixed the last legal cocktail in New York City in the minutes before midnight on 15th January 1920. (He cut it so fine that the last legal cocktail to be mixed became the first illegal one to be consumed, thrown back just after midnight.)
“What,” he was once asked, “is the best way to drink a cocktail?” His answer fizzes with both wit and cautionary wisdom: “Quickly, while it’s still laughing at you.”
Location? A no-brainer this week. The Savoy Hotel…
One For The Kids…
This is London (1959)
By Miroslav Sasek Universe Publishing Inc
Until few years ago, if one had been looking for the work of the great Miroslav Sasek, then several long days trekking round London’s great secondhand bookshops would have been the order of the day. No bad thing, of course. The forgotten art of browsing, particularly in secondhand bookshops, is one of London’s great pleasures.
This is London, however, is such a special book that it deserves to be widely available. Thankfully, some bright spark came up with idea of re-releasing (and updating) his children’s classics – and now you can pick them up everywhere from independent book retailers (support your local bookshop!) to the gift shops at the major museums.
Sasek was born in Prague in 1916, which is where he trained as an architect. It is as the illustrator and writer of the wonderful This is… series of children’s books that he will be remembered by generations of young readers. How many children caught the travel bug from Sasek’s masterpieces?
The first – This is Paris – was published in 1958. The second, and our favourite, of course, was This is London published the following year. This is how the Times Literary Supplement of the day reviewed it:
“The color is magnificent and uninhibited, the draughtsmanship brilliant but unobtrusive (one gradually realizes that these bold, stylized drawings are minutely accurate as well as true in general impression). The humor is characteristic and pervasive but always subordinate. The jokes are all pointed. Miroslav Sasek has drawn the visitor's London from foggy arrival to rainy departure. His book is a series of impressions, unrelated, one would think, but they add up to a remarkably complete picture of the modern city. The words and pictures are closely integrated; each has it terse style and humor.”
The affection in which he holds his star – London herself – creates an effect akin to a great director eliciting a once-in-a-lifetime performance from a famous actress of whom her public thought they had seen everything: only to be delighted all over again with a fresh and new take.
Being a man of taste, in his narrative Sasek includes a very fine pub indeed - Ye olde Cheshire Cheese…
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